Prisoner of Benda pt. 1

I thought I'd start sharing some of my favorite storyboards from my time at Futurama.  So here's a short but fun sequence from an episode called "The Prisoner of Benda".  Directed by my good pal Stephen Sandoval, this was one of my favorite episodes to storyboard because it involved the cast switching brains with one another.  Here the Professor inhabits Bender's shiny metal ass, so he decides to have a little fun with it.  Originally, Bender was going to miss the target by just a little bit and land in the dirt, but our Supervising Director Peter Avanzino had the genius idea of having him smash into the stands.  More to come!

Work in Progress Short Film designs

These are designs from a "feature style" storyboard short I'm working on.  It's tentatively called "The Witching Hour" and is about a reformed wicked witch with anger issues trying to catch a cab on a rainy Halloween night.  She finds it especially hard to keep her composure when a bevy of beauties in tiny Halloween costumes turn out to be her competition.

A Beautiful lady for good measure:

I (loosely) based this off of a photo of Japanese model Jennifer Kurosawa.  Loved her pose.  Also I've been reading a ton of Scott Pilgrim comics, hence the anime-ish style.  Drawn with ink on paper, painted in photoshop.

Cafe Sketching in Various Locations

I've gotten more into cafe sketching over the past year, which adds an extra degree of fun to travel, and even makes Jury duty even more enjoyable.  Here is a smattering.

First, a batch from a recent trip to Seattle:

Both of these pages were filled at the Space Needle.

Next, a funny little sketch of a couple that my wife and I saw while having coffee at the Americana:

And finally, a fairly productive day spent doing my civic "doodley" at Jury Duty:

Happy Birthday to Guy Davis

Guy Davis has long been one of my favorite artists.  His birthday was yesterday, and I got this to him just under the wire!

Cafe Sketching at Disneyland

Drawings from Paris

  

 

 

 

My wife and I had an amazing traveling around France for 2 weeks.  We stayed in Paris for about 5 nights, after which we explored the Normandy, the Loire Valley, and Burgundy.  Most of these drawings and paintings were done in Paris when we had a bit more time to linger in single locations instead of spending half of each day drawing.  I wish I had spent more time trying to draw the architecture, but really I'm a people person!

Jaws

One of my favorite scenes in any movie ever!  I love that Hooper/Richard Dreyfus is every bit as riveted as the audience is while Robert Shaw delivers his stunning monologue.

Vulcan Raven

My buddy Stuart Livingston has been doing some awesome drawings from one of the greatest video games of all time, Metal Gear Solid.  I couldn't let him have all the fun so I tried my hand at one of the outrageous villains from the game: Vulcan Raven.  Stuart makes it look SO easy, but this took me way longer than it should have.

"Don't Let Me Down"

Here's my finished piece for The "All Together Now" Beatles Tribute Art Show at Gallery Nucleus (opening Saturday July 7th at 7pm)!  It's done in pen and ink and watercolor.  I had played around with some color comps for a fully painted version but ultimately I wanted to highlight the drawing with some light washes.  You can see my other concepts and rough drafts here.

To me, the greatest Rock moment of all time is when the Beatles gave an impromptu performance on the rooftop of their Apple Corps recording Studio.  Imagine being on your lunch hour in London when you see people rushing through the streets, murmuring that the greatest rock legends in history are performing a their first live show in three years out in the open!  The Beatles had stopped touring in 1966 after they figured out that their concertgoers could not possibly hear their live music through all of the manic screaming that accompanied their shows.  Suddenly, they were blasting a live performance of brand new music from the rooftops!  When the police showed up, the Beatles were actually pretty excited because they would have loved to have had footage of themselves being dragged off by "the man".  To the Fab Four's chagrin, the police tamely asked them keep it down or turn it off (as if they were some kids having a loud party, and not the greatest band of all time creating history).  At the end of what would prove to be their final live performance together, John leaves a joking farewell to the audience,"I'd like to say 'thank you' on behalf of the group and ourselves, and I hope we passed the audition."

There is a melancholy feeling to the whole performance that is very moving to me.  The rooftop concert proved to be the last time the Beatles performed a live show together, and you can see from the footage that there is a distance between each of them.  No longer are they all clad in matching suits, Beatle boots and mop top haircuts; no longer were they the happy-go-lucky young lads trying to make it big.  Each man had become a legend in his own right, and the rooftop concert showcases each Beatle's individuality as much as it also is a great example of the magic that they created when they were together.  "Don't Let Me Down" is one of my absolute favorite songs; there is an earnestness in the vocals (John handling lead with Paul and George providing beautiful two and three-part harmonies) as John pleas with Yoko to understand that he is really putting his vulnerability on display for the first time   and needs her not to let him down.

Hi Everyone!  I'm very excited to be a part of the "All Together Now" Beatles Tribute Art Show at Gallery Nucleus (Benefitting Doctors Without Borders, opening July 7th, 2012)!  My lovely wife Dawn Au will also have a beautiful piece in the show (she'll be posting it here soon).  Here are some roughs and a color comp for the piece I'm submitting (the bottom two images represent where my final piece is headed).  I originally wanted to do a separate piece for each Beatle, but time constraints beat that idea out of me!  So in the end, I decided to do a piece showing the Beatles performing their last live concert--on top of the Apple Corp building in 1969.  I'll post my final painting closer to the show.

Influence Map

I've been wanting to put this thing together for a long time!  I think it was a really valuable exercise and it's really cool to be able to look at it and really see what makes me tick artistically.

Figure (Gesture/Story) Drawings

These are recent figure drawings from a class I took last year at The Animation Guild.  I'm finally getting around to scanning them and comping them together.  The class focused on using the model as a springboard for gestural, story-based drawings.  Special thanks to teacher Mark McDonnell for all the great drawing tips!

Morning Warm-up Sketch

I love Community!  I really hope it gets renewed from here until the end of time.  This was today's warm-up sketch.

Beatles for Sale

Here is a piece I recently did as a thank you to Tim Sale, for the beautiful piece he did for me, as well as all the influence he's had on my art over the years. I work digitally most of the time, so it was a great challenge stretching my legs using pen and ink.